Day 519

Weird day. I learned that the rural airport where I store a vintage car that I own was struck by a tornado last week and several hangers were destroyed. Evidently, half a dozen airplanes were demolished, but the hanger where my car is stored wasn't touched at all. I got lucky. The guy who happens to own the hanger wasn't so lucky. His dog attacked the teacher's dog in training class tonight. It's never a good move when your dog attacks the teacher's dog.

People keep wanting me to do stuff for lower and lower budgets. I just wonder where all this is going to end. If I had any advice to give a young person wanting to start their own ad agency, it would be this: always try to work for very large companies that have a purchasing department. When you work for a small company where the owner pays you out of their own wallet, nothing you do will ever be cheap enough. You can cut your prices to the bone and it will still seem too expensive to folks who are paying you with their own money. One thing I have learned over the years is that people are much more generous when they are paying you with other people's money.

I spent a couple of hours this afternoon paying bills and trying to do some office bookkeeping. I sure wish that when you got your credit card bills, they would tell you what you actually bought. The statements do tell you the name of the store where you made the purchase, but it's up to you to remember what you purchased. I've made a number of electronics purchases during the past several months at Fry's and Sweetwater. I look at the credit card statement and then I look around the office to see if I notice anything new, and I still can't remember what I bought.

This is one of those days where I envy the dogs. They never have any bills to pay. They just spend half their day sleeping and then divide the rest of their time between barking, eating and pooping. Sounds like a good life to me.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 518

I shot some footage at a dentist's office today for a television commercial I'm putting together about Lumineers. It was pretty amazing to watch how the dentist was able to totally transform a guy who had severely damaged his front teeth in a sports injury into someone with a picture perfect smile in less than an hour. I still don't like going to the dentist, but I'll have to admit I was quite impressed.

I was also quite impressed with my little HD video camera. Making the video was almost effortless, compared to dragging 100 pounds of heavy Beta-SP equipment around with me like I used to do. One of the cool things about this little camera is that I can make complicated camera moves that look just like the camera is attached to a boom arm or jib, just by holding it in my hand and raising my arm. The camera is so small and light that it is very easy to keep the shot steady.

When I finished doing the video shoot, I took Dash to the vet for his bi-weekly antigen shot. As I waited in the lobby, I couldn't help thinking that after a very complicated dental procedure, the dentist I had just visited was right on time for his next appointment. Veterinarians are never right on time for their next appointment. It doesn't matter which vet you go to either. You're always going to sit in the lobby for about thirty minutes.

As busy as my day was today , I actually welcomed my thirty minutes of doing absolutely nothing. It was really the only rest I got all day. When Dash and I got back home, it was right back to website design and writing about watches. Even though I'm still a bit tired, I'm happy that business had picked up this year. I'm slowly but surely getting more efficient about handling the increasing work load. If things continue at this frantic pace. Dot won't be able to manage the office anymore. She might need an assistant.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 517

It's time to retire all my Beta-SP equipment. I got a call to shoot some video for a TV commercial tomorrow and realized that the inexpensive little HD camera I took to Houston with me a few weeks ago was better suited for the job that all my old "studio quality" analog equipment. The client is probably going to roll their eyes a bit when I show up tomorrow with a little pocket camera that isn't much bigger than an iPhone. "You're not going to shoot a TV commercial with that," they'll say. Hey, whatever works has always been my philosophy. I'm going with the little camera that records great looking HD video on an SD memory card.

The week is actually off to a pretty good start. My new HVAC client likes the initial design I showed him for his website. This is always a good sign. Sometimes you can still salvage things when they hate the initial design, but it's always an uphill battle. I have a feeling that this particular website is about 75% done. We still have to flesh out the staff bios, add some more pictures and get some of the database driven features to work properly, but we're definitely on the home stretch.

Now that I'm starting to get a lot of Twitter followers, I need to figure out an easy way to get rid of all the spammers. When I just had a few followers, I wasn't even aware that these folks existed, but there are tons of them. Typically these people are following from two to five hundred people, have absolutely no Tweets of their own, and are usually from Russia. I just need some sort of automated thingie that will automatically unfollow anyone who Tweets using a cyrillic keyboard and I'll get rid of 95% of these spammers.

I think the nail that Dot tore out last month during the thunderstorm is starting to grow back. I didn't really expect that it would grow back at all, but today I felt the tip of a nail starting to protrude through her paw pad. Maybe Dot will get lucky this time.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 516

We spent most of the day at the La Buena Vida Vineyards, enjoying the nice weather, visiting with other Dalmatians, and trying to get the word out about Dalmatian Rescue. The winery hosts its annual Canines, Felines & Texas Wine event every May and this is the third year that Dalmatian Rescue has attended. This was actually the first year I've been to the event myself, but Janet goes every year. I enjoyed myself. So did Dot and Dash. We took both dogs with us today and they enjoyed getting to meet all the other dogs at the winery. I think they enjoyed the abundance of dog treats even more. This was an upscale crowd. I saw people buying expensive cheese trays and then feeding the cheese to the dogs. Lots of champagne and Prada purses too. Dot and Dash got to see their friend Willow again. I didn't get to drink any wine though. I just had bottled water. Sadly, my blood work seems to confirm that my liver just doesn't appreciate wine anymore. Hamburgers aren't prohibited yet, so I did have a tasty burger.

The afternoon might have been a bit too relaxing. I found myself falling asleep in my chair from time-to-time. I'm continually tired these days. I need to start getting seven or eight hours of sleep again. Somehow, I don't think that's going to happen though. Blogging, demanding clients and a habit of watching television after I've gone to bed aren't very conducive to sleep.

The dogs certainly didn't have any trouble sleeping today. They both had a big day. Despite all the phobias Dash has about riding in the car, the dogs slept peacefully all the way home.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 515

What a beautiful day. You can't beat clear blue skies and 65 to 70 degree temperatures. No pollen either. My allergies didn't bother me all day. This was a good day to do yard work, so that's what I did. I mowed the grass, trimmed bushes and watered. After I put the lawn mower away, the dogs supervised the rest. They liked the nice day too. I hope this weather lasts a while, but it can't last long. It's often 100 degrees outside by early June.

I can't stop writing watch articles. I even wrote one this morning. Writing about watches is making me want to start buying them again. I really shouldn't. It's kind of an addiction. Watch collecting will suck money out of your wallet faster than having a problem with alcohol or drugs. I couldn't afford some of the watches I've been writing about anyway. The ones I like the best cost between $15,000 and $20,000 each.

Oh, well. I'll just stick with what I've got. I've got so many watches already that a battery seems to goes dead on one just about every day. I put a battery in one of Janet's after breakfast this morning. I'll probably put another battery in something else tomorrow.

I've got enough done today that I might even be able to catch one of the new episodes of Dr. Who this evening. I haven't seen any of the new 2011 episodes yet and I'm curious whether the show holds together now that it's being shot here in the United States. I'll let you know. So far, I still think that the first series with Billie Piper playing the doctor's companion Rose Tyler is the best.

Dot and Dash get to go on an outing tomorrow. A local winery has invited Dalmatian Rescue to an animal friendly event at their vineyard. Maybe if we give Dash a little wine at the event, he'll be quiet in the car on the way home.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 514

Well, Blogger is finally back. That was something I wasn't expecting. I've had the web server where I host my company site go down once or twice, but it was always back up again in a matter of hours. I think Blogger was down over 30 hours. This must have been something really serious. I wonder if we'll ever know what really happened. I don't think we'll find out much from the Blogger team. They've kind of circled the wagons and are very keeping tight lipped about this one.

One thing I learned yesterday was how important it is to back everything up locally. Even though my Wednesday and Thursday posts just disappeared on Blogger, I had a pretty easy time reconstructing things. I retrieved the text for the lost posts from my XML backup and the photos from a file I keep locally on my hard drive. I think everything is the same now, except for a few comments I lost.

I'm really glad it's Friday, even if it does happen to be Friday the 13. This has been a very hard week. I still don't think I've caught up completely from my week away from the office. I'm getting back into a nice regular rhythm now though. I do my watch blog articles for Larry Brauner right after walking the dogs and eating breakfast. Then I answer my e-mail and deal with the current crisis of the moment. Afternoons are usually reserved for website design, unless I am paying bills like I was today.

I like being busy. Not too busy though. That's the hard part...keeping everything in balance. I definitely need to mow the grass and work on the yard a bit this weekend. We've had so much rain lately that everything is growing like crazy. The yard is green, but very unruly. I need to get up on the roof again and get rid of the standing water as well. I'm kind of scared to go up on the roof these days, since I was stung repeatedly by a swarm of bees the last time I ventured up there. Luckily, the weekend isn't all work and no play. Dalmatian Rescue is having an adoption event at a local winery this weekend and we're taking Dot and Dash. Since we're taking Dash, the trip to the winery might end up being work after all. He's getting a lot better about traveling in the car though. One can only hope.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 513

I spent most of the day writing html code. Now that I've spent the past several months doing a variety of different things back-to-back, I realize that I don't really like writing html code. I'd really prefer to spend my time video editing and writing. Writing and video editing generally seem to pay better than designing web sites too. All this makes me wonder why I'm still spending so much of my time designing and maintaining web sites. Probably because people are still asking me to build them. Today's coding isn't going to make me rich, but I did make good progress finishing what I've started. If I keep on working this evening, I may even have something to present tomorrow.

I just noticed that blogger.com, where this blog is hosted, has been down most of the day. What's up with that? I've seen service disruptions of an hour or so from time-to-time, but never anything this long. Blogger has been down over 24 hours. I've never missed a daily post in the entire history of this blog, but this may be out of my control. I guess the only thing I can do is write today's post in a word processor and then hope that blogger comes online again before midnight. I don't know why all this bothers me, but it does. Surely a big company like Google must have a backup plan. At least they could do things like the power companies do when they have a rolling power outage. Instead of shutting the entire domain down and taking hundreds of thousands of blogs down with them, couldn't they just take a couple of hundred down at a time while they isolate the problem? I bet there are a lot of frustrated people right now.

There's plenty of other stuff for me to do however. Maybe blogger will be back up again after I take the trash out to the street. Maybe it will be up again after I vacuum the carpets. Maybe it will be up after I balance my checkbook. I'm not going to lose any sleep over this though. It's out of my control. I learned a long time ago not to worry about things that were out of my control. Oh well, if Blogger is still down at midnight, I'll just backdate today's post when it eventually comes back online.

The park looks exceptionally green and beautiful right now. It's the perfect time to take Spring wildflower pictures. Maybe I'll do this tomorrow if I get my new website finished in time. Last year the wildflowers looked kind of spotty, but we've had lots of rain lately and they look fabulous this year. All I need is a cloudy bright day without much wind. Wait a minute….today was a cloudy bright day without much wind. Why didn't I do all this stuff today?

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 512

Another rainy day. I'm sure my regular readers know all about rainy days by now. The dogs are huddled under my desk, shivering and barking at every thunderclap. Standing water is accumulating on the roof. I try to remember to save my files often during heavy rains, because you never know when the power is going to go out. The area is so wooded where we live that tree limbs often fall on power lines during bad weather and knock the electricity out. At least I got the dogs walked early this morning, before the rains started. This evening was hopeless. There is still thunder and lightening all around us. Like it or not, the dogs are just going to have to poop in the yard tonight.

I've been so busy lately that I didn't even know what day it was today. When Janet came home, she mentioned that there would be no dog class tonight. Dog class is on Wednesday. I've been walking around all day thinking is was Tuesday. I guess it doesn't really matter. I'm going to be doing exactly the same things every day this week. I'm spending a lot of time on the new website I'm designing, since I promised my client that I'd have it ready to show by Friday. I'm still writing a new watch article every day as well. I could probably write two or three articles a day, but this is a long-term, ongoing project and I need to leave time for my other work. So far, writing about watches has been fun. I know a lot about watches and the writing comes easily. I'd probably make a good brand manager for a watch company. Actually, I probably wouldn't make a good brand manager. After over twenty years on my own, I don't think I could drive to work every morning and report to a boss ever again. The only boss I've had for many years is the exceptionally bossy Dot, who never fails to let me know if I'm even five minutes late with her dinner and her walks.

I got my May invoices out today. It's weird how some clients are so consistent that they pay on exactly the same day every month, while others just let the bills sit there for two or three months. Maybe it's just me, but I think if a company is consistently two or three months late in paying their invoices, there's got to be other things wrong with them as well. The trade show folks certainly aren't among these laggards. They've worked out all the international payment complexities and promised to have a check to me by the end of the week. Yay! That's the way it ought to be.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 511

I woke up this morning feeling sick, and I'm finishing the day feeling even sicker. I think I'm just totally run down. It's been ages since I've had a chance to relax and do nothing. Lately, my life has become an endless "to do" list that extends out far beyond the horizon. On the other hand, maybe I'm not run down at all. It could be that I just have a bad case of the flu. I certainly have that aching feeling in my bones that comes along with every case of the flu that I can remember. I spend so much time alone that I have no resistance to other people's colds and ailments either. Probably spending a week with thousands of people in Houston, followed by Wine on the Roof with hundreds more just did me in.

It was a busy day nevertheless. I worked on the new HVAC website, wrote some more watch articles and played phone tag with the people in Houston who are still trying to figure out how to pay me with a credit card. This is essentially what I did yesterday and it's probably what I'll be doing tomorrow as well. I just hope a feel a little better tomorrow. Today, my head feels like it's going to explode.

When I was walking the dogs this morning, several joggers asked me if I'd seen the coyotes. I'm glad I hadn't because sometimes Dot and Dash don't ignore the coyotes like they should and start barking wildly instead. I certainly don't want to provoke a pack of coyotes. I've got enough problems as it is.

Somehow I've completely missed the new season of Dr. Who. I wonder if I missed anything good. I know that they were supposed to shoot this year's new episodes in the United States. Usually when a British or Canadian television series starts doing episodes in the United States, the whole thing starts to go down hill. This is certainly what happened with Lexx. The first three seasons were good, but the last and final season, shot here in the United States, was absolutely terrible. Hey guys, it's not all about the Grand Canyon and cowboy hats over here.

Maybe they'll figure out how to pay me tomorrow. Money is nice. I always like receiving money whether I'm sick or not.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 510

After a week out of the office, you might expect that today would be a mess. I thought the same thing, and I certainly wasn't disappointed. I started the day out by discovering why one of the YouTube videos I uploaded last week mysteriously disappeared about an hour after it started running. You guessed it. The problem was me. I had made a typo in the video's title that led people to believe they were watching next year's trade show. Nope. I'm not Dr. Who. I just typed 2012 instead of 2011 on one of the supers. I'm surprised that I didn't notice this at the time. I'm even more surprised that nobody in the elaborate approval chain noticed it either. Luckily the problem was easy to fix. I re-edited the video right after breakfast and uploaded it again. Now, all the YouTube videos are up and running smoothly.

My first watch article is up and running on Larry Brauner's Luxury Watches blog as well. When Larry contacted me and asked if I'd be interested in blogging about watches for his growing empire of watch blogs, I was excited. Hey, I'm a pro. I'll write about anything, but getting a chance to write about something I am actually interested in is much more fun. I plan to write a new watch article every day for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, some of Larry's considerable social media expertise will rub off on me while we're working together. I'm really looking forward to working on this watch blog project in the months ahead.

I got an assignment today to design a website for the company that installed the new heat pump at my rent property last month. Too bad I didn't get the job a little earlier or I might have been able to negotiate some sort of trade-out for the expensive roof top unit that unfortunately I've already paid for. I'm always happy to get a new job however, no matter when it arrives. This is a new industry for me too. That's good! I'm really trying to expand my horizons this year, so I won't be totally dependent on veterinarians in the future.

I'm still not sure how I'm going to get paid for my week in Houston, but I'm feeling a lot more confident that I actually will get paid someday. People on two continents are looking into the matter.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 509 - Mother's Day

I think last night's Wine on the Roof party was the most enjoyable of these events I've been to yet. The weather was perfect. Everything was extremely well organized. The award recipients were gracious and after each of their acceptance speeches, nobody regretted giving them their award. It was a nice evening. It hard to believe I've been involved with these things for ten years now. To me, it still just seems like yesterday that we were planning the first one.

Since it was Mother's Day today, the dog park was pretty empty. Everyone was probably having a special brunch with Mom when we arrived with Dot and Dash. The dogs had a great time though. I think they like the park better when it isn't crowded with too many dogs. Dash actually played with a few dogs today and although Dot is seldom playful, she certainly enjoyed the beautiful Spring weather.

This afternoon, I finally threw away about seventy-five pounds of old magazines, advertising samples and ancient financial records that have been cluttering my office. I don't really think I need American Express receipts from 1987 anymore. I don't need advertising samples from companies that don't even exist anymore either. I can't believe I did so much work for Memorex Telex. Where is Memorex Telex these days? Out went years of Communication Arts and EQ magazines, along with a surprising number of of old French Vogue magazines and a few old Esquires and Atlantic Monthly magazines that I must have saved because someone I knew had gotten a story published in them. I saved a few old AdWeek magazines with pictures of a much younger me drinking cocktails at various advertising functions. I threw away a lot more though. The ad agency world and me are ancient history now.

As a result of my efforts, I now have room to store away some photo backdrops and camera equipment that has been sitting in a corner on the office floor for months now. I've still got a long way to go, but I am determined to have a nice working space again by the end of the year. If I was really brave, I would just tell Janet to throw away everything that irritated her the next time I went away on a business trip. I'm sure I would be alarmed when I returned, but I probably wouldn't be missing anything of real value. Everything I need to do my job is on this computer now. It's actually been here for over five years. I am still surrounded by paper, but only because I've spent a good part of my life writing and designing things that were meant to be printed on paper. One of these days, I'm going to have to acknowledge that paper has become irrelevant. My clients don't use it anymore. My bank and my accountant don't want it anymore. The post office still delivers piles of it to me everyday, but I throw 99% it straight in the trash.

I was a big step for me to finally be able to throw away most of my paper ad portfolio. I haven't really lost anything though. The same stuff is already on my iPad.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 508

Tonight is the big Wine on the Roof fundraiser for East Lake Pet Orphanage. This is the event that the big poster featuring the dog and cat as Rhett and Scarlet from Gone with the Wind was created for. This year's guest of honor is Loretta Swit from the old M.A S.H. TV series. Radio personality Richard Hunter will be there as well. The event seems to grow every year. I remember doing the very first poster for these events over ten years ago when 13" x 19" was considered a large size. This year's poster is six feet tall. That's not the biggest change to me however. The big difference between those early events and this one is that I can't drink any more. A wine tasting event is much more fun when you can drink the wine.

My bee stings have stopped hurting and started itching. I don't know which is worse. Now I feel like I've got a bad case of poison ivy. I guess I ought to just get used to it, since I'll probably come in contact with the stuff within the next two or three weeks anyway. I see large patches of poison ivy now whenever I walk the dogs. All it takes is a few minutes of idle daydreaming on my part, and the dogs will walk through a big patch of the stuff and the urushiol oil will get all over me when the dogs curl up with me to go to sleep.

It looks like tomorrow is going to be a work day whether I like it or not. There are a ton of things I'm behind on after my week in Houston. I guess I could put everything off till Monday, but I like to start off the week with a clean slate. Somehow if I'm still working on last week's jobs on Monday morning, I never seem to get caught up.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 507

Well, it's back to the real world. When I climbed up on the roof this morning to remove the standing water that had accumulated while I was gone, I was immediately stung multiple times on the face by a swarm of bees that was hovering over a nearby puddle of water. Welcome home, I guess. We had all sorts of problems with bees last year, and it looks like they're back again. These were particularly tenacious bees and they wouldn't leave me alone until I was off the roof and back inside again. I'm going to have to find a way to get rid of these critters for good. If they'll sting me, they'll probably sting the dogs as well. Since the dogs are much smaller, a lot of bee stings could really be dangerous for them.

I little later when I went out to water the lawn, I picked up the sprinkler to move it somewhere else and found a snake coiled underneath. I like animals but I'm definitely not fond of insects and snakes. Texas has an abundance of both and I really wish they'd all just move to Oklahoma or something.

I still have no idea how I'm going to get paid for my week in Houston. I made a few inquiries this morning and ended up with this sinking feeling that I'm not going to get a check for quite a while. The Germans seem to think that their Houston office is supposed to pay me using the booth contractor's credit card, but when I called the Houston office, they told me to send my invoice to Germany. This has happened to me before, so I'm really not all that surprised. Often, long after I have finished a job, someone will tell me that I'm not even on the approved vendor list. I always get paid eventually, but it takes so long that I'm never sure what I'm actually going to get. Sometimes the project is bid in Euros and by the time I get paid, the value of the dollar has changed. Occasionally this works to my benefit, but other times it doesn't. I really need to build in an extra 10% into my bid price to cover the aggravation.

I did manage to get unpacked today. I took a bunch of dirty clothes to the dry cleaner. I put the cameras and electronics away. I was just about to call the video camera manufacturer and demand a replacement camera because I kept having problems with monitoring audio while I was in Houston. I tested the camera one more time however, and discovered that the problem was with me, not the camera. All the control buttons on this tiny camera are extremely close together, kind of like they are on a Blackberry. It's way too small for me. Evidently, when I hit the record button, I would also sometimes hit the audio monitor button and turn off the sound to my headphones. I didn't realize this at the time unfortunately. Luckily, all the recordings came out fine. Everything was being recorded correctly. I just wasn't hearing it while I was filming.

Janet decided to clean my office while I was gone. Now I can't find anything. She says this is for my own good and that we can't live in this kind of mess any longer. When someone says something is for your own good, it usually isn't.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 506

Today went very smoothly. I managed to get an entire video on water treatment shot, edited and uploaded before noon. Most days I had a lot more time to work, because the booth was open for business until 6 or 7 PM. Today was the last day of the show however, and everything ended at 2 PM. I really learned a lot this week. I learned that wearing a nice pair of wool slacks is a lot more comfortable at the end of a long day than the Levis I've worn most of my life. I learned that you really need a pair of good quality noise canceling headphones to monitor sound when you shoot video interviews in a noisy hall like this. I learned that I can go all day without eating if I need to. I learned a lot about editing with severe time constraints under less than optimal conditions. Although I'm dog tired at the moment, I really had a lot of fun. In my tame, sedate little world, this is kind of my equivalent of working without a net. I hope these guys ask me back. The entire team was super professional, extremely nice...oh, and did I mention that they're going to Rio next.



I was a little worried about Houston traffic and being late, so I paid a little more to fly Business Select on Southwest Airlines. I'll eat the difference on my bid price, but the upgrade was definitely worth it. I used to hate flying on Southwest because of the long lines going through security and the inevitable fight for a good seat when you finally get to your plane. Business Select takes care of all this for just a few dollars more. You've got your own special line at check-in and you get to board the plane first. I sat in row three on both legs of the trip.

Tomorrow it's back to website design. It will probably take me most of the morning to sort through my e-mail and find out what deadlines I've already missed. I'm pretty sure that I told most of my clients that I'd be gone all week, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was something important that was supposed to go live yesterday. Jasper, one of our friends dogs is very sick. Please say a prayer for him tonight.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 505

You're looking at at what's been my office for the past three days. I'm working in a cave-like space on the inside of the booth where all the servers and electronics are hidden. On the outside, this space just looks like a giant column that is holding up the second floor of the display. There are four full time people inside, programming the dozens of huge flat panel displays on the outside of the booth. There are enough flat panels at this booth to fully stock a good size Best Buy store. I sit in a corner filled with boxes of brochures and giveaway items stacked all around me. For every minute I spend outside filming, I'll spend an hour or more in here editing or uploading video material. I actually kind of like it in here. It reminds me of my own messy office.

When I arrived at the booth at 7 AM this morning, everyone was in a panic. Apparently, somebody had left their car keys in this little room and didn't remember until the show was over for the day and everything was locked up. Somehow, the guy who lost his keys convinced security to let him back in the building and then he cut a hole in the roof and jumped down into the cave room to get his keys. All the expensive flat screens were on the blink when the team returned the next morning and it took 45 minutes to get everything working again. Let's just say that I wouldn't want to be the guy who cut the hole right now. Some people blame the mishap on the Bavarian Happy Hour that ended the day yesterday. Others just blame it on the Norwegians.

Things are going much smoother now. I have four videos up on YouTube. Lots of Tweets are floating around on Twitter. I even got something published in the hard-to-please energy blog. When I come back to the hotel each evening, I see other guys with badges on lanyards around their neck who look just as tired as I am. In the elevator this evening, a guy noticed my logo shirt and badge and asked me how long I had been working the booth. I told him this was my first year. "I've been doing this show for ten years now," he told me. "I don't know if I can take it much longer." Even though this was my first year, I understood completely.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 504

Things went a little smoother today. I actually managed to finish two videos. This is twice as many as I completed yesterday, but still nowhere near the four or five videos a day I had originally planned. The first video was about floating oil production facilities. Have any of you even heard the term FPSO before? I hadn't either until a few weeks ago. People are spending billions of dollars on these huge ships though. I imagine the model in front of the booth is pretty expensive too.

The second video was of the Flash Mob singing in front of the booth. This one actually sounded pretty good, because all the singers wore wireless mics and the sound system was so loud it overpowered the crowd noise. Every day I send these videos off to Germany to get approved, but I don't know what happens to them after that. To the best of my knowledge, none of them are running on YouTube yet.

I'm not having much success with my blog posts either. The energy blog I'm sending my articles to keeps writing back and telling me that I'm being too technical. The editor wants me to write like an "ordinary person" instead of writing like an energy professional. Weird! I am an ordinary person! I write about dogs. I couldn't be overly technical if I tried, since I don't really understand half the technology anyway. I think most of you would probably agree that I write in a conversational, easy to read style. Well, apparently I'm still too technical for the editor of this blog.

All this being said, I'd still consider the day a success. Hey, they fed me lunch today and I discovered where the bathrooms are. That's progress to me. A few tips for anyone who is ever planning on doing something like this. Bring a pair of scissors with you. I've never seen so many things in shrink wrap packaging that are impossible to open without scissors or a knife. I'd go buy a super light carbon fiber tripod too. My tripod has turned out to be the heaviest thing I've had to lug around all day. My little personal 4G hotspot has turned out to be a great investment. You wouldn't believe how slow a trade show's WiFi network can become when 20,000 people are trying to check their e-mail at the same time.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 503

I am exhausted! I got up at 6 AM and didn't get back to the hotel until 6 PM. In between, I didn't even have time to go to the bathroom. Somebody brought me a turkey sandwich from one of those vending machines about 3 PM, but I didn't have time to eat it until almost five. To say I had "first day" problems would have been an understatement. I had huge problems.

There were no electrical outlets anywhere near the exhibit space, so I couldn't even use my good phantom power lav mics . I had to use the on-board camera mic instead and ended up picking up a lot of noise from the hall. The hall was so noisy in fact that I don't know if there was anything I could have done that would have made a difference. The pictures looked good. The sound: not so good. My video editing software crashed about ten in the morning. Luckily, I have two "users" on my laptop: both me. When I logged in as the "other" me, the software worked again. That was great. What wasn't so great was that my e-mail didn't work for the "other" me. I had never bothered to set it up and couldn't remember my SSL password. I kept logging and out all day long to work on the video and check my e-mail for approvals from Germany and Orlando. One me kept telling the other me that I didn't have administrative privileges and wouldn't give me the files I wanted. Most of my graphic files for the video were on the volume where the editing program didn't work. I kept having to drag them to the public folder and log in again as my other self to access them.

Remember, I originally bid this job with a four person crew. I'm still doing everything the four person crew was supposed to do, but there is only me. The people who were interested in the energy blog wondered why I wasn't writing all day. The people who wanted YouTube videos wondered why I was wasting time writing at all. I wasn't allowed by corporate to Tweet directly to Twitter. I had to e-mail my Tweets to somebody in Florida and then they would we Tweeted later after they were approved. When people out at the booth wanted me to Tweet something, they lost interest real quickly when I told them it wouldn't appear on Twitter until two days later

With all they problems I was having, I'll have to say that everyone in the booth was super nice to me. I think they understood what I was dealing with, since most of them had an insane workload themselves. The show itself was pretty amazing. There were 3-D virtual reality presentations. There was a Flash Mob who came and disrupted things at random intervals with pretty professional acappella vocals. There were elaborate models of things I only vaguely understand. My little YouTube videos were pretty Plain Jane compared to some of the things I saw today.

Hopefully, I'll get a little more sleep than I did last night. I'm not even bothering with supper tonight. I'm too tired to walk half a mile to the restaurant on the other side of the hotel. Sleep actually sounds better than room service too. That's how tired I am.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 502

Well, I've only been here a few hours and I can already tell I've made a few miscalculations. I certainly didn't need to lug a big suitcase full of nice clothes down here. When I went to the orientation meeting at the Magnolia Hotel this afternoon, we were all handed blue logo polo shirts and told to wear black pants. Ironically, this is almost exactly the same way I dress for Dalmatian Rescue casino parties. I could have just worn my roulette dealer outfit and I'd blend right in.

Luckily, my handy 4G hotspot works just fine here in Houston. The only problem is that nobody knows where I am supposed to actually send the files when I'm finished with them. One of the client's marketing people said they'd find me the address of an FTP server to upload my movies to tomorrow. I hope they do. Otherwise I'm just all dressed up with no place to go.

Some of the clients invited me to go to a Brazilian restaurant with them this evening. I went back to my hotel room and ordered room service instead. I knew that was the only way I'd even have a ghost of a chance of reading through tons of PDF files containing the weeks speaker presentations before tomorrow morning. Oh, and I have to get this blog finished too. I can't forget that.

I wish I was staying in the posh downtown boutique hotel where my clients were staying. It's not that I dislike the rundown old Crown Plaza across from Reliant Center, it's just that if I were staying in the same place as everybody else, it would save me a ton of cab money. At this rate, I'm going to run out of the money that I allotted for cab fare by Tuesday.

As soon as I finish this, I'm going to put together a short little practice video to see how long it takes to upload. This definitely won't be a work of art. There isn't much to look at in this room anyway. There's a laptop on a little desk, an iPhone recharging, some room service plates and glasses, some clothes I probably won't even end up wearing and an air conditioner I can't figure out how to turn off.

I need to remember to put in a wake up call for 6 AM. I need to be at Reliant Center by 7:30 AM. It's going to be a long day.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 501

Focus. Focus. Focus. I've really got to focus on the important things. I went back and forth all day between chores like learning how to export Photoshop files with the correct type of alpha channel and figuring how to attach an external microphone to my iPhone to deciding what kind of shoes to wear on my trip. Probably the shoes are really the important thing. All my comfortable shoes look like shit because I walk dogs in them day after day. All my good looking shoes hurt my feet, since I hardly ever wear them. I can't really wear an old pair of hiking boots with a good suit. I still haven't decided what to do, since I'll be on my feet all day at the booth and I'll also probably have to dress up like the rest of my client's team.

After running around town again this morning, I finally have the Plan B that I need for the video shoot. I'm always nervous having just one camera. I've been looking for a way to use my iPhone as a backup video camera. The little phone takes some great looking HD video, but the sound has always been a problem. After visiting the Apple Store, Radio Shack and Fry's Electronics, I finally was able to assemble the right selection of cables and adapters that let me patch a good quality professional microphone straight into the iPhone headphone socket. Amazingly, the Rube Goldberg contraption works great. I made a quick little test video while I was eating lunch and was really pleased at the sound quality. The main Plan A camera has even better sound, so I'm feeling pretty good about the video part of my assignment now. Ironically, using a small unobtrusive camera requires a huge tangle of cables and adapters that almost defeats the whole purpose of taking the little camera in the first place. Too bad they aren't just hiring me to take pretty pictures. It's the audio side of things that's starting to weigh me down. I finally got everything to fit in the PortaBrace bag though, so it's on to other things now.

Janet and I still need to go and be roulette dealers later this evening at the Dalmatian Rescue casino party. I'm hoping to get my suitcase packed before we go. If I wait till after we get home to pack, I'm going to be so tired that I'll just start throwing things in the suitcase and wind up in Houston with two left shoes and no underwear.

It's starting to rain again too. This wasn't part of the plan. I hate leaving rainwater on the roof all week because there's sure to be a leak in the living room when I return. You can't stop the rain though. I'm just glad we aren't having tornadoes here in Dallas like they are in other parts of the country.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 500

Janet and I went to the Stern Monroe reunion this evening. It was nice to see some of my old ad agency friends again. It would have been even nicer if I remembered who everybody was. Hey, it's been a long time. I don't even remember what I used to work on at Stern Monroe. About the only clear memory I have of the place was sitting in the agency conference room and watching the space shuttle Challenger blow up as a group of us watched the launch on TV. Yes, it was that long ago.

I'm terrible at reunions. I usually just stand around and wait until somebody recognizes me. I have trouble with the names and faces of people I see every day. When I'm around a group I haven't seen in twenty five years, it's hopeless. At least Tom and Larry, the agency's founders, remembered who I was. I suspect that this was only because one of the two men fired me at some point.

I actually woke up in time to see the royal wedding this morning. The ceremony was quite nice. Whenever I see things like this, it kind of makes me wish we had a king over here. All we have are people like Donald Trump and Oprah. They may think they're royalty, but they're not. Whether you like the monarchy or not, there's something to be said for a heritage that goes all the way back to 1066.

My own time frame is much shorter. I think in terms of days instead of centuries. I'm actually kind of amazed that I've managed to keep this blog going for 500 days now without missing a single post. A small accomplishment perhaps, but an accomplishment nevertheless. I guess the next big milestone is 1000 days. 1000 Days kind of sounds like a book title. Maybe if I can keep the blog going uninterrupted for 1000 days, it might actually turn into a book.

Dalmatian Rescue has another casino party tomorrow night. It's time to be a roulette dealer again. This event is one of our largest casino parties of the year. I've got to remember to get everything packed for my trip before we leave for the event. It might be good to get the blog done before the party too. I'm usually really tired when we get home from these fundraisers and my flight to Houston leaves early the next morning. It's going to be a very busy weekend.

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